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To a Malamat Mystic it is good to obtain a false conviction

  • Writer: davidsmith208
    davidsmith208
  • Mar 25, 2018
  • 2 min read

It is called the way of blame

Jesus says the falsely accused shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. 

Blame has a very positive effect on the spirit “because there is safety in derision” as Yeats understood. 

In the teachings of Ahmad Ghazali to which many of Hafez’s doctrines are traceable, the human spirit can abandon the temporal realm only if and when one is subjected to public blame and abuse. Page 77 

The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door by  Robery Bly and Leonard Lewisohn

The malamati tradition was developed in Nishapur during the eleventh century. Followers of the malamati tradition later developed into separate qalandari Sufi orders, which under the leadership of Jamal al-Din Sawi became scattered all over Egypt, Libya, Turkey, Persia, and India. 

Khurramshahi mentions ten different malamati doctrines espoused by Hafez. See Ahmet Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1994), pp 1090-97

The best summary of the underlying ideals of malamati spirituality by any western writer comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson from his essay on “Compensation”:

The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more in his interests than it is in theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and when they would triumph , lo! He has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken to me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. 


 
 
 

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